Barley's BMW 520i £333 banger rally mobile!

[bobbarley]

Cheers Jay will look at them too 

For sure.  It takes me about 5 seconds to pop Myla into the car with isofox, just clips in and it's done.  When the weather is awful it's a god sent being able to have her in the car and gone in seconds.

[bobbarley]

Our child seat comes out and clips into the frame for the push chair, so we needed to be able to get it in and out with ease.  Isofix is definitely the best baby related thing we've bought to date, even Jules agreed 

[Guy]

We spoke to eTyres the other day, they're kindly replacing the tyre on our spare with a new one, also for free!  Weirdly the car uses special R390 tyres, that is they're 390mm, 15.35"!!  Only Dunlop make that sort of tyre, £160 each! 

They did have this stupid idea of using metric tyres for a while, that is why so many have switched  to 15" or 16" alloys.

my old man had exactly this problem...

[Guy]

Well the beemer is taxed and insured, going in for her MOT and service on Wednesday.

Today we decided to take her out for a good run to see how she would perform.  We set off from Crewe, Cheshire, and headed towards Wales for some exciting roads.  We headed over to the Evo Triangle, some amazing scenery around there!  We did a circuit of the triangle each, so much fun!  Then on the way back we went down the horse shoe pass.

All in all we covered 183 miles and the car didn't miss a beat.  On the road the steering is responsible and there's good feedback.  We tried throwing it around some corners much faster than we should, no understeer or oversteer, it just going around or slides completely.  For a big fat estate it's really impressive, there's no body roll at all.

Engine and gearbox performed fine.  It's an automatic so obviously not perfect, yet was more than enough to propel us around the twisty roads with vigour!  We did a LOT of over taking and again, she took it in her stride.

The best part is after all that driving we got out feeling like we'd barely done any distance at all.  She just eats up the miles, the perfect touring car!

those BMW Tourers are brilliant... my old man had a 530i Touring on similar mileage and it was rock solid... the only thing that ended was the sump gasket going as that needs silly amounts of labour to change it..

[bobbarley]

Christian from eTyres popped over today with the new tyre for the BMW, making us two very happy bunnies!

[jeynesey]

I did consider it.  It's not fast enough though and has no ISO points for a child seat.  I hate automatics too as a general rule.

Seatbelt seats are just as good as ISOFIX; you just need to know how to fit them properly.  Linzi has a child seat safety day on Thursday so we'll get the full info 

Its quite scary how many people fit the seats incorrectly  or are unaware that the seat is not even suitable for their car

Have you paid for this safety day? Lorna can show you how to fit correctly FOC??

[Rhyso]

I did consider it.  It's not fast enough though and has no ISO points for a child seat.  I hate automatics too as a general rule.

Seatbelt seats are just as good as ISOFIX; you just need to know how to fit them properly.  Linzi has a child seat safety day on Thursday so we'll get the full info 

Its quite scary how many people fit the seats incorrectly  or are unaware that the seat is not even suitable for their car

Have you paid for this safety day? Lorna can show you how to fit correctly FOC??

No its a free service offered by our council    And as she works for the council.....

[bobbarley]

I'm happy to say that the BMW passed it's MOT on Wednesday with flying colours, not bad for a £333 17 year old car with 158k on the clock!

The only issue was a loose hand brake with the mechanic sorted for us.  Only minors were slightly corroded brake lines, however they've been on the last few years MOT's, mechanic said it was nothing to worry about, very minor.

He serviced the car as well and found no issues.  Cleared out all the standing oil when he replaced the spark plugs.  Said the oil was nothing to worry about, common with high milers like this one.  Brakes are also sound, everything is as it should be.

All of this done for free by the excellent people at Grosvenor Garage, Crewe.  Telephone 01270 662505 for excellent service

[VR6_Wherry]

This really has shown that people are still willing to help out a charity and it's great to see!

[bobbarley]

The vinyls are going onto the car this weekend, it's going to look great. Photo shoot being done on Sunday too, so pictures to follow